User talk:ArchieVist
Galleries red links Thanks for the heads-up. I copied and pasted the format from another page and as the image was visible, didn't think to check whether the link worked. Have corrected the ones in those galleries. Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 21:20, February 8, 2017 (UTC) FL 1 Hi AV, Yes, you are correct, those numbers determine the default sort for the category. I edit in MonoBook, where I add the category as usual, adding |1 after Light. Good to see you back in action :) Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 10:40, February 26, 2017 (UTC) isn't and doesn't... It strikes me that this could be a job for our Bot?! Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 10:45, March 2, 2017 (UTC) Book categories Great teamwork - starting at opposite ends so to speak :) Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 16:30, March 3, 2017 (UTC) SE reading Thanks for posting the links, AV. I am listening to the interview as I am typing. I don't normally go in for having first editions etc... guess that interest arises when people have spare cash - but I must admit I was drooling at seeing all those lovely hardbacks. Hope they found good homes with Malazan fans rather than book investors! Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 17:49, March 13, 2017 (UTC) :It is that Canadian accent of his, lol. I think this interview should be compulsive listening to all fans, especially his thoughts on writing Felisin and the Mhybe. Really good interview although the questions are sometimes difficult to make out. I have been doing other things inbetween and listening in stages... enjoying it immensely. Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 21:23, March 13, 2017 (UTC) New-style citation labels for ExtDP's AV: When the dust finally settled after the kerfuffle over whether to have one or two citation labels in ExtDPs, it had been decided (not by me) that there should be three. As it now stands, the fourth line of the "Complete A-Z" introductory remarks for all of the Malazan ExtDP's reads: :"Characters that are only talked about or referred to in the books but do not make a full appearance are marked with [ i.e., ]." While the fifth line now reads: :"Characters that are talked about or referred to before then making a full appearance in a later chapter of the book are marked with [ i.e., ] and [ i.e., ]." This system had been implemented by the time I began the RG's ExtDP (which is now finished). All the other Malazan novels' ExtDPs citation labels have been post-edited to reflect this new policy (except, I think, not for the 'Bauchelain and Korbal Broach' books). I thought to give you a head's up on this because I noticed that you have been adding citations to ExtDPs lately. Having these three citation labels was not my idea (I was happy with "Referred to only" and "Full appearance", myself) and I didn't know about it until it was a fait accompli. The new system makes citation labelling more involved, but I, personally, found it workable when I did the RG ExtDP by keeping a separate paper record of citations (Stone Age, I know) and by adding all of the footnotes at the very end (which is my usual practice, anyway). Pcwrcw (talk) 18:46, March 14, 2017 (UTC) Oops... I was closing a window and somehow managed to hit the rollback button for Keruli on the Recent Changes page underneath. Hopefully, the undo has restored all your edits! Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 19:07, March 31, 2017 (UTC) re: "House of Chains" Extended Dramatis Personae AV, I've finished "Midnight Tides" ExtDP (save for some remove-red-link articles I want to write). So, looking forward a couple of weeks, I've put my name down to finish the "House of Chains" ExtDP next. :I have a question about that - I'm not sure what the usual practice is when working on an ExtDP which has already had a number of people who have contributed to it. Should I put some other name(s) down, as well as my own where HoC is concerned? If so, whose name(s) should I add? I'm asking you because I see that you've contributed a fair amount of work to it and presumably have an opinion, in general, on the matter. This question also applies, post hoc, to the MT ExtDP I've just finished. I don't want to appear that I'm taking all the credit when it should be shared. Thanks, Pcwrcw (talk) 01:12, April 10, 2017 (UTC) re: HoC ExtDP Redux AV, thanks for getting back to me with regard to the "House of Chains" ExtDP, etc. :I see, however that I've phrased myself ambiguously with reference to the time frame when I plan to be working on the HC ExtDP - I meant that after a week or two, I would begin to work on the HC ExtDP. It will probably take me more than a couple of weeks to finish it (depending partly on how much more needs to be done). I want to spend some time first on writing MT articles and catching my breath before going on to the HC ExtDP. :With reference to leaving the 'tabber/abber' break in place for the entire time that it would take me to finish the HC ExtDP...well, quite frankly, it makes me very nervous (perhaps unnecessarily so) to leave it that way for more than a single working session. Unless you feel strongly about it, please just bear with me on this : ) :Thanks for telling me about your position re: the TH ExtDP. I did wonder about whether to work on HC or TH first, but I ultimately decided to finish going backward to finish the 'Bonehunter' arc first. If the TH ExtDP was still available after that, I was planning on going on to finish it next. Cheers, Pcwrcw (talk) 20:28, April 10, 2017 (UTC) Siege of Capustan WOW! Terrific work :) Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 16:16, April 29, 2017 (UTC) :I thought you might be sitting on a stash of notes. That page is going to be an amazing reference tool once it is finished. Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 12:25, April 30, 2017 (UTC) Avowed I remembered that I hadn't checked the 'Grey Swords' talk for updates which made me take a look if I had missed other talk contributions. I hope Grinebone will be up to the job of changing the categories... would save a lot of work. Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 21:42, May 6, 2017 (UTC) Re: 'SaemAnkelyk' versus 'SaemEnkelyk' AV: not that it's all that important, but I noticed that you redirected the page "Saemankelyk" to "Saemenkelyk". I don't know how your edition of TH has it spelled, but the edition I am using (US TOR TPB, 1st edition, 1st printing) spells the word consistently with an 'a', rather than an 'e' except for one exception that I found (there could be others) and that one was in dialogue among Tiste Andii Priestesses - and even there the same page (US TPB, Chapter 16, p.531) has the complete word spelled twice with the 'a' and also includes the etymology: ' "Saeman" mean "Dying God" and "kelyk" means blood '. The 'a' spelling occurs at the first appearance of the word (US TPB, Chapter 4, p.104) and in multiple appearances of the word in (at least) Chapters 6, 10, 12, and 16. I've added the phrase "(also 'Saemankelyk')" to the pages Saemenkelyk and Kelyk and "(aka 'Saemenkelyk')" to the TH ExtDP entry for "The Dying God" where 'Saemankelyk' now appears. I don't necessarily think, therefore, that things need to be changed back, but I am curious as to why you made the switch. Cheers, Pcwrcw (talk) 21:38, June 23, 2017 (UTC) ::AV:Thanks for the explanation re: "Saem(a/e)nkelyk". I see that I overlooked the 'misspelling' of the page title when I edited the page (probably because I was editing, and not originating the article), and so I must not have looked carefully enough at how the page title was spelled - I see now from the page history that the article was originated with the "e" misspelling. So 'my bad', I guess, as I should have caught it. ::As I implied above, I think the "a" spelling is the one that SE intended (although, there is (as I also said) the one (at least) "e" spelling - which I now think is just a typo in the text (which, frankly, I had completely missed until this came up). Handle this (or not) as you think best (I don't know how to undo a 'redirect', or I would be inclined to go in that direction on my own). *sigh* Pcwrcw (talk) 00:06, June 24, 2017 (UTC) Does anyone actually drown? I'm only on my second read through of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, and I'm picking up on a lot of interesting little tricks Erikson uses in his writing. One interesting thing, though I'm not 100% about it, is that it seems named characters are immune to drowning. The most obvious example is the Napans from Kellanved's Family who faked their own deaths, but it goes way deeper. Between Deadhouse Gates and House of Chains, a lot of characters make their way through the Nascent, and all of them somehow manage to avoid drowning - even Silgar's guard - the one who dies just as they reached Seven Cities, winds up getting killed by a shark instead. Kalam gets stabbed and thrown in Malaz Bay near the end of DG, but he manages to swim to shore. On Drift Avalii, Darist says Apsalar drowned repeatedly, only for her to show up in the middle of a battle to save the day. Even the Letheras Drownings - I think the only named character to face that was Ublala Pung, and he's the guy who actually makes it by walking across the bottom of the river. There's a couple of cases I can think of where unnamed people drown - other debtors at the Drownings, and some unnamed soldiers in the Chain of Dogs at the River Vathar crossing - but these are literally characters so unimportant they didn't even get names. So is drowning always a red herring in this series? Or is it setting up for the surprise that someone actually managed to drown? Rashkavar (talk) 09:32, June 26, 2017 (UTC) : Nice to have even the tenuous confirmation, thanks. I'm making a post on the forums as you suggested. Rashkavar (talk) 16:48, June 26, 2017 (UTC) Re: page titles with parantheses AV: I had not realized that I was making difficulties with my page naming practices - but I take your point. I will avoid using parantheses unless they are needed (as in your examples) in the future. I have just finished writing a page for "Feral (person)" but I will 'rename' the article to just "Feral". As for "Gnaw (Teblor hunting-dog)" I can rename that as well. The "Temple Historian (a Priestess of Darkness)" is a different situation. I can certainly rename it to just "Temple Historian" - I had already given it a cross reference in Unnamed characters under TH. The thing is, although the character of the Temple Historian is not really important, the conversation she has with the 'High Priestess of the Temple of Darkness in Black Coral' is one that I think IS, as it makes clearer just how dire the situation was with regard to various crises (regarding the Tiste Andii and Mother Dark) that were ongoing in the book at that time. For example, I wanted to include the Dialogue quote, which (I think) would not be considered kosher in a typical straightforward Unnamed characters entry. I was thinking more along the lines that SE was using the conversation between the High Priestess and the Temple Historian to convey information to clarify the ongoing complex situation at the point in the book, rather than the 'who or what' of the Temple Historian's role in the Temple. To summarize: *I will cease and desist using parantheses in page titles unless they are 'really' necessary. *I will rename "Feral (person)" to just "Feral", "Gnaw (Teblor hunting-dog)" to just "Gnaw", and "Temple Historian (a Priestess of Darkness)" to just "Temple Historian" (with a cross-ref to Unnamed characters). Since we're on this subject, do you have a good title for the page that I need to write for the High Priestess of the Temple of Darkness in Black Coral? She's too important to relegate simply to Unnamed characters, but it is made clear in TH that she had long since 'lost' her actual name. It doesn't help that there are already two other important High Priestesses in TH (both, fortunately with names) - not to mention the High Priest of Burn and "Witch", the Priestess of the Redeemer... ::Ah, I see you got to re-naming Gnaw just minutes after I thought I had figured out how to do it. Thanks muchly for doing it for me and for editing the cross-links. I see that 'Renaming' produces a 'Redirect' (although I wouldn't have known how to do it without leaving a 'Redirect' notice). I also now see how to use the 'toolbox' list of "What links here" to find existing cross-links so as to be able to edit them as well. I've re-named Feral and Temple Historian and edited the corresponding cross-links for them. Well, I learned something I needed to know, so that's good. Sorry to have put you to all the trouble. Pcwrcw (talk) 22:39, June 29, 2017 (UTC) :::Thanks also for the information on Redirects...we're going to have to stop meeting like this...! Pcwrcw (talk) 23:01, June 29, 2017 (UTC) Re: Broken Links (Apologies for the late reply) 01:26, June 30, 2017 (UTC)|Broken links}} Mobile Quick Links Hi AV. Using mobile to edit for first time and found it cumbersome to find pages so have created a quick links page and added it to mobile homepage as featured article. As I don't have laptop available - can you tell me if it also shows up on big screen? Nowiki may solve the problem if so, I suppose. Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 09:31, July 12, 2017 (UTC) :Thanks �� Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 19:59, July 12, 2017 (UTC) re: "TTG" usage AV: You are correct, the term "TTG", as such, does not occur in the books. Using it was my attempt to clarify which Guild was being referred to, as I've come across (in other unrelated situations) times when the word "Guild" was used in the same article - usually long, complicated ones - (or even once or twice in the books - ICE books especially) referring to two different "Guilds". Not to mention the times I've come across Trygalle, by itself, being used to refer to the Trygalle Trade Guild, but which was linked to the "Trygalle" page referring to the city of Tygalle. However, as you think using "TTG" is not a good idea, I will go back through my edits and change the "TTG" occurrences to "Trygalle Guild" (which IS used in in the books) or just plain "Guild". Thanks for the feedback. Cheers, Pcwrcw (talk) 19:42, September 8, 2017 (UTC) ::AV: There. I think I've gotten all the "TTG"s changed to "Trygalle Trade Guild", "Trygalle Guild" or "Guild". I used the "What links here" Toolbox option on Trygalle Trade Guild, so I think I managed to track them all down. OK, caught three more "TTG"s and changed them. Hopefully that's all of them... Pcwrcw (talk) 02:46, September 9, 2017 (UTC) AV: Egad! Two more "TTG"s that I missed (and in places where I had actually checked for them too - *sigh*). Thanks for catching the (surely) last two TTG appearances. I had no idea that my usage of that particular acronym had become so all-pervasive. I think they must have been multiplying in the dark... Pcwrcw (talk) 18:18, September 9, 2017 (UTC) re: Across-the-board problem with Book version DPs & ExtDPs discovered AV: I had occasion to access one of the SE MBotF "Dramatis Personae" and it did NOT display - although, strangely enough, if I went into "Edit" mode, the correct code for the 'current' Dramatis Personae DID appear. I have checked all of the other DPs and the problem (whatever it is) affects nearly all of the Malazan books: all ten of SE's "MBotF" ; all six of ICE's "NotME" ; and the two SE "Kharkanas" books. (I want to emphasize that there are many DPs affected which I have never had occasion to do anything to and I have not been doing anything regarding DPs which is in any way unusual.) The only DPs not affected were the DPs of ICE's "Dancer's Lament" and (unsurprisingly) those of SE's "B & KB". I have checked to see if the problem affects the DPs when in "Oasis-mode" (as you know I work in "Mono"), and (as far as I can tell) they have the same problem. It seems to be a systemic fault within the Malazan Wiki - that would be my first guess, anyway. If you go to an earlier enough version of any given DP (via "History"), there will finally be one that will appear, but the number of earlier versions one has to access before arriving at a 'working' DP, varies from 3 (for MT & tCG) to as many as 89 (for MoI - 22:19 1/5/17) (and all these first 'working' DPs have widely different dates). If you "Compare" a 'working' version found in this fashion with the 'current' version, it will correctly give the changes that were made in the intermediate 'missing' versions. The rest of the wiki does not seem to be affected by this...it responds as though the 'current' version (although not displaying except in "Edit" mode) is in existence. If you edit the 'current' (or any of the intermediate 'missing' versions), those changes are registered as usual and in the way one would expect. Edits in earlier versions will also register as though one had edited them when they were the 'current' DPs. I have absolutely no idea what's going on. Has there recently been a major system-wide change in the wiki community? Since I have been working on articles and not on DPs (as such) lately, I don't know exactly when this problem first arose. I was able to make a hard copy of the BH DP (which was displaying at the time) on 8/23/17 so I know things were OK then, but I haven't actually accessed any of the DPs later than that (I routinely work from hard copies of DPs that I keep on hand - as well as from my own notes, rather than referring to the on-line versions - unless I wanted to edit them or check formatting, etc.). Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but perhaps there is an easy explanation and/or fix that is not obvious to me at my low level of expertise. I wanted to run this past you first, but it may be a problem for JR (or someone higher up). Pcwrcw (talk) 23:09, September 15, 2017 (UTC) ::AV: Well, good news - shifting to "Firefox", did the trick for me. All the DPs are behaving as they should behave. Even the problems with Anomander Rake, etc. has cleared up. Working in "Firefox" is going to take some getting used to, but I'm just delighted that the solution was as simple as it was. ::Thanks VERY much for tracking down the problem and the solution to it so quickly! This all makes me feel like such an antique...*sigh* Pcwrcw (talk) 03:11, September 16, 2017 (UTC) RE: material included/excluded in "Kalam Mekhar" AV: I'm not sure exactly why you reverted the edit that I did in the "Deadhouse Gates" section of Kalam Mekhar. I read the material (more than once) in the actual text of my copy of DG (TOR US HC) before I made the changes that I did, and I've just now re-read that material in the DG text extremely carefully, and it still seems to me that my version fits the facts as given in the text, whereas the previous version does not. The sections I'm talking about occur in the last 4-5 (or so) pages of DG Chapter 13 and the first 1-4 (or so) pages of DG Chapter 15. For one thing, Kalam doesn't make the final decision to leave Aren for Unta (although that was almost certainly always his ultimate plan) until after he meets and talks to the captain of the "Ragstopper" in the "Squall Inn" at the end of Chapter 13. Kalam doesn't even meet 'Salk Elan' (at the beginning of Chapter 15) until Kalam's been ON the "Ragstopper" for two days - when he does meet him, 'Salk Elan' mentions the Mebra connection (plus a lot of other things) but doesn't claim (or even suggest) that he's a merchant. I had left that factoid in my edited version as I thought it might have been referred to (i.e., that 'Salk Elan' was passing as a merchant) somewhere earlier (or later) in the book, but re-reading the passage again, it appears that 'Salk' certainly doesn't mention it when he first talks to Kalam. As far as I can tell from the end of DG Chapter 13, Kalam doesn't actually "say goodbye" to anyone but Minala (when he gives his stallion to her and gets a faceful of the melon that she had been eating in a back room inside the Inn - berating Kalam for NOT "even saying goodbye to Keneb, or Selv, or the children") - "the parents bathing reluctant children" are out in the garden of the Inn, getting cleaned up - they're not actually present. Kalam, having picked up his saddlebags from the back room, then immediately rejoins the captain of the "Ragstopper" (who was still sitting in the main room of the "Squall Inn") and the two of them leave and go directly to the "Ragstopper" moored in Aren Harbour. Kalam, certainly, hasn't said anything to Keneb about leaving before Kalam leaves - when Minala subsequently tells Keneb that Kalam is gone, "Keneb's jaw dropped." It is Minala who says goodbye to the rest of her kin, not Kalam. Am I missing something here? Curiously, Pcwrcw (talk) 22:10, September 27, 2017 (UTC) ::AV: Egwene has written a version of the Kalam Mekhar article DG section that you and I have been discussing, and I think her version will do fine as far as I'm concerned - I hope it addresses your concerns as well. I've been aware for some time that my "wordy" style is in contrast to your more concise one, but I hope that there is room on the wiki for both approaches/philosophies. I admit to having difficulty summarizing material, but I like for whatever I write to as accurately reflect the actual book text as possible, and I daresay I sometimes (often?) err on the side of including too many details and adjectives/adverbs. I'm aware of this tendency of mine (which is a lifelong characteristic of all my writing, in whatever context), but I DO try to do my best to be as concise as it is possible for me to be. Cheers. Pcwrcw (talk) 20:12, September 28, 2017 (UTC) Walk in Shadow Great minds... following the Facebook link LoMS put up (thanks LoMS!), I was about to update when I noticed you must have been following the same tracks :) Bummer about WiS but great news for 'current day' Malazan fans :) Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 16:59, October 26, 2017 (UTC) Spooky I just got the 'edit conflict' message as I was adding (person) to Patch! Spooky is all I can say!!! Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 14:00, November 20, 2017 (UTC)